Perspectives around institutional innovation and enterprise learning

This series of columns explores how innovation in the business practices, processes, and structures is necessary to enable scalable learning and create institutions that can thrive in the 21st century. These new types of institutions have great potential for talent development, growth, and innovation. Read the HBR articles below.​

Three types of jobs that will thrive as automation advances
While it’s true that technology is taking over routine tasks from many workers, it is also reshaping many supply and demand trends that drive our global markets. It’s this second technology-driven shift that can prevent automation from eliminating jobs; but jobs will change.

Fulfilling the promise of AI requires rethinking the nature of work itself
Everywhere today the news confronts us with deeply held fears of AI and automation. Coverage often focuses on the job loss and social unrest that are viewed as likely to follow. These fears aren’t unfounded: managers across industries have cost targets and technology enables lower-value tasks to move from people to machines.

Help employees create knowledge—Not just share it
Many leaders see organizational learning simply as sharing existing knowledge. This isn’t surprising given that this is the primary focus of educational institutions, training programs, and leadership development courses.

Great businesses scale their learning, not just their operations
Ronald Coase nailed it back in 1937 when he identified scalable efficiency as the key driver of the growth of large institutions. It’s far easier and cheaper to coordinate the activities of a large number of people if they’re within one institution rather than spread out across many independent organizations.

Technology should be about more than efficiency
We humans are a paradoxical species. On the one hand, we are uniquely endowed with the power of extraordinary imagination – the ability to see what could be, but has never been. On the other, we are imperfect.

Turn the pressures of technology into potential
Digital technology is full of paradox, yet we often tend to under-emphasize or even ignore the paradoxes—often looking at either technology’s problems or its promises, rarely examining both at the same time. But it’s only when we explore both that we gain new insight into what will truly help us harness technology’s economic value.

How Drucker thought about complexity
Throughout his life, Peter Drucker strived to understand the increasing complexity of business and society and, most importantly, the implications for how we can continue to create and deliver value in the face of complexity.

Mind the (skills) gap
A bachelor's degree used to provide enough basic training to last a career. Yet today, the skills college graduates acquire during college have an expected shelf life of only five years according to extensive work we've done in conjunction with Deloitte's Shift Index.

How to make your big idea really happen
Inspired by the loss of her thirteen year-old daughter, Candice Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980 to combat drunk driving through education and legislation. Just a few years later, Lightner and MADD played a pivotal role in passing a federal law.

Five ways to hold the right kind of attention
No matter how talented or accomplished you are, you cannot always count on attracting and retaining the attention of others. Too many options compete for everyone's attention, and they multiply with each passing day.

Five tips for smarter social networking ​
We are all trying to figure out how to get more value from online social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Most of us are just skimming the surface in terms of the potential these networks offer us as individuals. To realize this potential, we need to become more.

Meet our authors

Co-Chairman | Center for the Edge

John is co-chairman for Deloitte LLP's Center for the Edge with nearly 40 years of experience as a management consultant, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has served as senior vice president of s... More

Independent Co-Chairman | Center for the Edge

JSB currently serves as the independent co-chairman for Deloitte LLP’s Center for the Edge and is a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at the University of Southern California. He has publish... More

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